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That Soul, then, in us, will in its nature stand apart from
all that can cause any of the evils which man does or suffers;
for all such evil, as we have seen, belongs only to the Animate,
the Couplement.
But there is a difficulty in understanding how the Soul can go
guiltless if our mentation and reasoning are vested in it: for
all this lower kind of knowledge is delusion and is the cause of
much of what is evil.
When we have done evil it is because we have been worsted by our
baser side- for a man is many- by desire or rage or some evil
image: the misnamed reasoning that takes up with the false, in
reality fancy, has not stayed for the judgement of the
Reasoning-Principle: we have acted at the call of the less
worthy, just as in matters of the sense-sphere we sometimes see
falsely because we credit only the lower perception, that of the
Couplement, without applying the tests of the Reasoning-Faculty.
The Intellectual-Principle has held aloof from the act and so is
guiltless; or, as we may state it, all depends on whether we
ourselves have or have not put ourselves in touch with the
Intellectual-Realm either in the Intellectual-Principle or within
ourselves; for it is possible at once to possess and not to use.
Thus we have marked off what belongs to the Couplement from what
stands by itself: the one group has the character of body and
never exists apart from body, while all that has no need of body
for its manifestation belongs peculiarly to Soul: and the
Understanding, as passing judgement upon Sense-Impressions, is at
the point of the vision of Ideal-Forms, seeing them as it were
with an answering sensation (i.e, with consciousness) this last
is at any rate true of the Understanding in the Veritable Soul.
For Understanding, the true, is the Act of the Intellections: in
many of its manifestations it is the assimilation and
reconciliation of the outer to the inner.
Thus in spite of all, the Soul is at peace as to itself and
within itself: all the changes and all the turmoil we experience
are the issue of what is subjoined to the Soul, and are, as have
said, the states and experiences of this elusive "Couplement."
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